Punjab Kings have suffered a major blow, captain Shreyas Iyer announcing at the toss on Wednesday that all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has been injured with a fractured finger. Consequently, Maxwell will be out of the rest of the IPL 2025 season. Iyer confirmed that the team has not yet confirmed a replacement for the Australian.
Marcus Stoinis revealed that the injury was suffered during a training session before their rain-hit game against Kolkata Knight Riders on April 26. Aiding PBKS’s injury woes, even pace bowler Lockie Ferguson was already ruled out earlier in April, and a substitute for him too remains pending. Head coach Ricky Ponting stated that the team has nearly a week in hand to decide on good stand-ins, with their next match Match 11 fixed against Lucknow Super Giants on May 4. They then play Delhi Capitals on May 8, and both games will be hosted at Dharamshala.
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“We’ve got until our 12th game, so we have a couple of games to go yet. With the squad we’ve got, we’re trying to find players in our squad anyway, we’ve got most basis covered. So we’ve got Azmatullah [Omarzai], Aaron Hardie, who hasn’t played yet, Xavier Bartlett who didn’t play today, it’s conditions based. But when we get to Dharamsala he will come back into the reckoning up there, where the ball might swing and bounce a little bit more.”
“So we’ve actually been a little bit patient. Maxi’s only been a couple of days, Lockie’s has been two or three weeks. And with the PSL happening at the same time, there’s not a lot of high-quality replacements out there, to be honest. So we’ve just been patient. We’re having a look around at Indian talent as well and we’re looking at what roles we might be able to fill with some younger Indian players. We’ll actually take a couple of guys to Dharamsala with us, a couple of guys trained with us yesterday and they will come with us to Dharamsala, we’ll have a closer look at them and they might find themselves with a Punjab contract going forward. It has to be this week, has to be before the 12th game, so stay tuned,” he said.
